Saturday, 21 September 2013

The photo that alerted the world

This
is a photo shot on the streets of Munich, Germany on 10th March 1933;
just six weeks after Hitler came to power.
The picture, published across the world and later in many history books,
was a chilling portent of the hellish events that were about to consume Germany
and much of the rest of the planet. Many
have seen this photo, but few know the background behind it.

Dr Michael Siegel, an eminent 50-year-old German Jewish lawyer,
is shown in the photo, bruised, barefoot, trousers ripped, being marched by
Nazi ‘brown-shirt’ auxiliary police.
The sign hanging from his neck was scrawled with the message, ‘Ich bin
Jude, aber ich werde mich nie mehr bei der Polizei beschweren’ – ‘I am a
Jew, but I will never again complain to the police’.

The day before this fateful photo was shot, the Nazis took
over municipal control of Munich. A national
emergency decree had just been passed to suspend ‘civil rights until further
notice’, including the constitutional right to free speech, the freedom of the
person, and the inviolability of a citizen’s property. In particular, Jews and Communists were
targeted, and all Jewish lawyers were to be banned from practising or even entering the courts.

That day, Herr Max Uhlfelder, Jewish owner of Munich’s
second largest department store that bore his family name, prepared to go to
work as usual. His shop, owned and run
by his family since 1878, employed around 1,000 staff and had some 7,000 square
metres of sales space. A highlight of
the store was the modern electric escalators that
effortlessly transported customers up or down the three floors of this popular
household and haberdashery store.

That day however wasn't usual, but what happened was to become usual in Germany under Hitler’s reign. Nazi Stormtroopers smashed the windows of the Uhlfelder store, and Max, along with 280 other Jewish Munich inhabitants, was taken to Dachau concentration camp for so-called ‘protective
custody’.

Max’s wife, desperate to find help for her husband, phoned
Dr Michael Siegel, their family friend and lawyer. Michael immediately made arrangements to attend
Munich’s police headquarters to complain that his client’s civil rights had
been violated. Next morning, Friday 10th
March 1933, Dr Siegel, smartly dressed as usual, reached the headquarters at
the appointed time. On entering the
police station, Dr Siegel was told that he was expected and shown to a basement interview room.

However, once inside, instead of facing the usual police officer,
Dr Siegel was confronted by a group of Nazi ‘Sturm Abteilung’ – storm
troopers, who had been recruited as ‘auxiliary policemen’ by the newly
appointed head of the Munich Police, Heinrich Himmler.

The burly men immediately unleashed a torrent
of blows against the defenceless Dr Siegel.
They knocked out some of his front teeth, perforated an ear drum, threw
away his shoes and cut short his trousers.
Blooded and bruised, a board was
then hung from his neck bearing the notice that he was Jewish and would never again complain to the police.

Dr Siegel was then kicked out of the police
station and made to march, barefoot and in his white “unterhosen”
(underpants). The Nazi
‘police officers’, about seven in total, led him around Munich’s inner city
streets, taking him on a circuitous journey, across Munich’s Karlsplatz
(central square), and eventually ending up at the main train station.

On the way a few passersby looked on shocked,
some stared with bemused curiosity, but others mocked and ridiculed, as Dr
Siegel looked straight ahead, his eyes fixed, swallowing the blood from his
broken teeth.

As the brown-shirted bullies arrived with
their ‘captive’ just outside Munich train station, they ordered him to stand
still. Then, drunk with derision, they loaded their rifles. One of
the officers yelled, ‘Jetzt stirbst du, Jud!’ – ‘Now you die, Jew!’The storm troopers
then scornfully laughed, about turned, and left.

Fortunately, a vacant taxi was nearby. As Michael Siegel was about to get in, a man
approached him. In an English or
American accent, he said that he’d taken a photo, and could he have permission
to publish it? Dr Siegel said yes, then
got in the taxi and asked to be taken home to 10 Possartstrasse in the
Bogenhausen area of Munich.

At home was his daughter Beate, looking
forward to her 8th birthday party in just four days time. She had stayed home in bed that day with a
cold. When she heard the key in the
front door, and footsteps entering the apartment, she thought it was her mum
coming back from shopping. Strangely,
she didn't come to see her.

Beate thought something must be wrong. She got up and saw her father’s tattered and
blood drenched clothes hanging on the hooks outside the bathroom. It was
a huge shock, and she couldn’t have any idea what had happened. She knocked on her parent’s bedroom door, and
hesitantly opened it, but her father had pulled up the eiderdown to hide his pale,
bruised and blood stained face.

‘Wait till your mother comes home,’ he said
in a pained voice. Beate realised that
something truly awful had happened.

Mathilde Siegel later told Beate and her
12-year-old brother, Peter, an outline of what had happened to their father,
but not the full detail. Eventually, Dr
Siegel recovered from his injuries, and didn't have to recover his pride or
dignity, as those he had never lost. Over
the next few years before the start of the war, he tried many times to practise
law again, but being Jewish in Nazi Germany, that was made impossible.

Look again more carefully at the photo of Dr Michael Siegel
being marched along the streets of Munich by his Nazi tormentors. This was a man who was shockingly brutalised,
and came home bloodied and bruised and awfully betrayed by his country. But despite the shock of being demeaned in
such a disgusting way, his head is still high as he walks barefoot along the
streets of Munich, those brown-shirted Nazi thugs goading him along. The Nazis were eventually beaten into
submission, but not Dr Michael Siegel. With his wife in 1940, they escaped the
Hitler dictatorship by taking a trans-Siberian train across the Soviet Union to Japan from where they embarked a ship to Peru, which they made their new home.

Years later Dr Siegel was asked what was going through his
mind as he was being beaten and then forced to march across the city? He replied that he was thinking, 'I’ll
survive all of you.' And so he did. Dr Siegel lived to 97 years, and enjoyed 50
years of marriage with his wife, Mathilde.

What happened to the shop owner that Dr
Siegel tried to save? Max
Uhlfelder remained incarcerated in the Dachau concentration camp with his son,
where many were severely brutalised and several died. In the ‘Kristallnacht’ Nazi attacks on Jewish
properties across Germany in November 1938, his department store was ransacked,
set on fire and its doors left open for several days. The store was later ‘confiscated’ by the
Nazi regime.

In January 1939, some eight months before the start of World
War II, Max and his son were released from Dachau, and the family managed to
obtain a visa to India, guaranteeing their survival from certain death if they
had stayed in Germany. Before leaving
Germany, they were stripped of all their assets and even made to pay for the
repairs of their ruined department store.

What about Peter, Dr Siegel's young son? By 1939, with world war imminent and attacks
on Jews and their property becoming more brutal, sinister and murderous, it was
obvious that Germany, which had been the home and nationality for hundreds of
years of Siegel ancestors, was no longer safe.
With the help of his dad, Peter then aged 18, managed to get a student
visa to England on strict condition that he left when his studies were
complete. War changed that
condition. He joined the British Army and after the war England became his ‘adopted’ country. Peter became an expert in minerals and
metals, and managing director of a successful multinational company based in
London.

And Beate, what happened to her, the young girl whose 8th
birthday was never to be what it was meant to be, dark clouded by the savage
attack against her dad and his unforgettably shocking and bloodied homecoming?

Well, this week I met the daughter of the man in the photo that alerted the world to the terror of the Nazis.

Bea, as she likes to be known, is a wonderful octogenarian
who survived the Nazis and who also sought refuge in England and made it her
home. Together on Wednesday evening, we sat and watched the remarkable
documentary in which she features, ‘The Children Who Cheated The Nazis’, at a
special showing of the film at The Wiener Library in London.

The documentary was produced in 2000 by
compassionate film makers Sue Read and Jim Goulding, and first aired on Channel
Four. It tells the story of how, in the months leading up to World War II, around 10,000 mostly Jewish children were
rescued from Nazi Germany, Austria,
Poland, Czechoslovakia and the ‘free city’ of Danzig, by coming to England unaccompanied
on a series of special trains and boats known as the ‘Kindertransport’.

There were strict conditions. The children were not allowed to stay in
England permanently, and their parents were not allowed to travel with
them. For the children, and their
parents, it was to be the most heart-wrenching separation of their lives. Most of the children never saw their parents
again, as they were later murdered by the Nazi regime.

To be allowed into England, each child
required sponsorship of £50, an enormous amount back in 1939, and a family to
look after them. Huge efforts were made
to save as many children as possible, and the British public raised
half-a-million pounds towards the rescue effort. When war was declared less than a year after the
Kindertransport mission started, the Nazis wouldn't allow any more children to
leave.

With her parents help, Bea , then aged 14,
managed to be selected to join one of the children’s ‘freedom’ trains, soon after her older brother
Peter had also made his escape to England.
At midnight on Monday 26 June
1939, Bea joined several other bewildered and tearful children on the platform
at Munich train station. As steam
bellowed from underneath the train, and the Nazi soldiers sharply separated the
youngsters from their heart-broken and often unsure parents, Bea climbed the
steep steps onto the train. With just
one small suitcase, all she was permitted to take, Bea joined a compartment
full of other children, not one adult amongst them, apart from the stern and
disapproving looks of Nazi officials and guards.

Through the train windows the children and parents
frantically waved each other goodbye, none of them knowing when they’d be with
each other again, none of them realising that almost all of them never would.

Through the midnight hours, away from the
daylight gaze of publicity, the Jewish children’s train made its long 550 mile
night journey north across the heart of Nazi Germany, through Nuremburg,
Frankfurt and Cologne, over the border into Holland, and a waiting boat to
England from the Hook of Holland. Bea
was sponsored by an elderly English non-Jewish widow, and later studied modern
languages at the University of London. Like many of the kinder children, who had no
choice, Bea settled in England. She married
twice, has three sons and six grandchildren, and became a magistrate.

Bea, and her brother Peter, did see their
parents again, but never again did they share the same family home
together. The documentary in which she
features, ‘The Children Who Cheated The Nazis’, is an accurate and carefully
reported account that deserves much wider viewing. It’s true that the children of the ‘Kindertransport’ cheated the Nazis out of slaughtering them, which for sure the Nazis
would have done if these youngsters had stayed behind. But
the Nazi regime also cheated these children out of the childhood, family, and
future that they should have had.

Bea told me she feels lucky. Luck of course is relative. She, her brother Peter, and her parents
Michael and Mathilde, were lucky to find liberation from the Nazis, as was
store owner Max Uhlfelder and his family. They were the ‘lucky ones’; the few who ‘got
away’, because most, the vast majority, didn’t manage to escape as they
did. Yet this ‘relative luck’ came with
the price of losing their family life; their savings and belongings; their
country of birth, and their relatives and friends who were left behind and
perished.

So it’s a luck tinged with a gnawing sadness
of what might have been, and an abiding anger towards the brutal nasty Nazis
who were so blinded by their flawed fascist ideology. Bea, with language that’s necessary but which
also belies her sweet gentle nature, has no hesitation in calling those Nazis,
especially the ones who bashed up and tried to belittle her dad, 'the shitty
bastards'.

Ten thousand mostly Jewish children were
saved from death in the Holocaust by being transported just-in-time to the
relative safety of England. It’s a
wonderful story and needs to be told to countless future generations. But it should also be understood that those ten
thousand rescued children amounted to less than 1% of the total number of
children murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Around 1.5 million completely innocent
children were callously annihilated because people were poisoned by an idea
that this was the right thing to do. The same virus of a belief also drove previously civilised Europeans to slaughter
and or subjugate millions of innocent adults during those years of vile fascist
power.

To understand this history and to avoid its
recurrence, we have to know the antidote to the virus of hate and abuse and
intolerance. Often, the virus starts
slowly and in small ways, and only spreads and grows when people say and do
nothing.

In Nazi Germany, one of the first acts of
government was to ‘suspend’ laws protecting human rights. That’s something we must guard against ever
happening again.

In response to the appalling atrocities of
the Nazi regime, the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights on 10 December 1948. Two years
later the Council of Europe drafted the European Convention on Human Rights,
which came into force on 3 September 1953. In addition, respect for human rights is an essential component of all European Union treaties and are reinforced by the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights.

These are vital, precious declarations that need to be
cherished, preserved and upheld. An act
of inhumanity against one human, any human, is an act against all humanity.

• Readers comments are very welcome, including opinions that oppose mine. Comments need to be on-topic and personal attacks will not be allowed. To read more about the style of debating that I encourage on all my blogs, please read my article:'Debate, don't hate'• Jon Danzig's 14-minute video on how newspaper lies can cost lives (click to view)

• Click the below arrow to listen to an 11 minute radio interview about the Calais refugees

30 comments:

Jon such a moving & well written piece I felt like I was there from how you described things. I also saw the programme & to know you met Bea who experienced it first hand & to tell her story so all of us is so important as we must Never forget! Sadly things like what have happened in Bosnia, Syria & many other countries is happening again but to different people using genocide. I hope for the day that we can all just live in this world without being persecuted for being who we are which at te end is a human like everyone else. Send my best wishes to Bea! Becki xx

Jon we need to be outraged by all human rights violations. If we are not outraged by war against Iraq, the Irish Famine, the genocide against the aboriginal people in America, the slave trade, and many other such conflicts in the name of someone's economic profit what point is it to be outraged with the Nazis. Every act of inhumanity should have us all marching in the streets otherwise the violations will continue. We cannot look at violation of Human Rights if done against our friends as worthy while similar violations of Human Rights that we commit against our perceived enemies as unworthy.

Agreed, of course. As I wrote in my article, 'An act of inhumanity against one human, any human, is an act against all humanity.' That applies to all forms of oppression against any human, in whatever form, in whichever country.

Sadly, what happened under the Nazi regime is just one example of inhumanity, but it was a huge and important one that needs not to be forgotten.

Dear Anonymous, your comment that the photo was 'Photoshopped' is childish and offensive, and it's quite clear that you could not have read my article. The photo was first published soon after it was shot, in 1933, many decades before Photoshop and computers were invented. It was published by newspapers in the USA and later worldwide and in history books.

First I would like to say, there is no question that Human Rights laws must be protected. As for the picture being fake or for that matter the story of what happened that day. I do not know , but such things do happen. However I would have liked to see a comparative picture that highlights the atrocities that are taking place now as we speak. The ‘Nazi’ story is linked to the formation of the human rights charter and also linked are the atrocities taking place in the Gaza strip as we speak. I am always baffled by the fact that a people who suffered so much under the hands of the Nazi’s could themselves become as evil in their actions. We can not protect or save the lives of Jews who died 70 years ago, but we should now focus our attention on the lives we can fight to protect , Lets do it before their last remaining homes are bulldozed to the ground and their children murdered. After 70 years it is time all Jews stopped looking at the past and started looking in the mirror.

To compare what the Nazis did to my father and later to many others, only worse, to actions taken by Israel today to protect its citizens from those who would like to annihilate that country, shows a profound ignorance of truth and reality.

"Anonymous" would do well to do a bit of homework to get his/her facts straight.

You have the typical response of the indoctrinated zionist - Israel's crimes against humanity and their belief in the righteousness of their actions are the closed approximations of the atrocities attributed to the Nazis

As a third-generation child of Holocaust survivors, I am shocked about the lack of humanity towards others that too are dehumanised. It is not antisemitism to feel sadness that those who are part of the state of Israel or support it uncritical perpetuate this 'us and them' attitude. And I appreciate this is not that simple when you feel under siege, rightly or wrongly. But we need to acknowledge that we use our yellow stars as some self-righteous badge to excuse land grabs and at times disproportionate retaliation. However, in the same context people cannot deny the atrocities and genocide that led to the exodus and formation of the state of Israel. Europe, in particular Germany has caused this mass-migration. You don't get to wash your hands of this situation. But I personally cannot look at this picture and yet feel comfortable about people being vilified for their religion. Religious profiling and discrimination is wrong in any circumstances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yvTHaDYFccEveryone should watch this multi award winning film made by an Israeli Jew about what he found when he investigated racism against Jews today in the world. A fantastic insight into just how complex and political this subject has become.

I couldn't get this to post using WordPress. It kept saying that it was having trouble verifying my identity on OpenID, so I have posted it on Anonymous:

As Dr Michael Siegel, we must ........No!.......words fail me!......... the following says enough:

"'An act of inhumanity against one human, any human, is an act against all humanity.' That applies to all forms of oppression against any human, in whatever form, in whichever country. ........Sadly, what happened under the Nazi regime is just one example of inhumanity, but it was a huge and important one that needs not to be forgotten".

Agree.

God bless the 'Righteous Among the Nations' that set such an exemplary example to us all.

Claiming that Islam is separate and that Muslims are somehow superior to other people, Islamic countries REJECT our conventions on Human Rights. That makes Islam - with its death penalty for critics and dissidents - comparable and akin to Nazism. With its lethal hatred towards, among others, Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, adulterous women and homosexuals, Mohammedan Islam poses a serious threat today, just as Hitler's Nazism did in the days of Dr. Siegel.

Sadly, the majority of humans (similar to chimpanzees but not most other primates) are in simplistic terms, controlled and driven by their amygdala (and its circuitry). These people seek power and control. This results in tribalism, "my god is better than your god," narcissism, and violence. Worse, the hormones released actually produce pleasure and are addictive. (Think about those who torture animals and prisoners). Hate is the passive emotional state that precedes, allows for, and leads to violence. The humans who are instead driven by their anterior cingulate gyrus, sadly a minority, are empathetic and try to emulate the Hippocratic oath: "First, do no harm." And also the original "negative" Golden Rule (promulgated by Confucius around 500BC, Hillel in the 1st century BC, and many others.) "Do NOT do unto others what you would NOT have them do to you." (I'll learn what you deem harmful to yourself and refrain from doing it.) This changed much later, sadly, radically, and predictably to the narcissistic, rigid, and authoritarian so-called "positive" Golden Rule: "DO unto others what you would have them DO to you" by the Romans and some early Christians, and culminated by Roman Emperor Constantine at the Council of Nicaea in 324AD and continues today. (I'll do what I LIKE/WANT to you and then you SHOULD do the same to me, because I know what's right.) The odds of humans changing are minimal, short of a global crisis or tragedy (or conquest by Star Trek like aliens who believe and function with the true "socialism" espoused by George Bernard Shaw, Socrates, Hillel, Spinoza, Einstein, and others, and not given to the adrenaline and dopamine rush sought by tyrants. Being a cynic, I'm not holding my breath.Bob Gale, MD,JD

A respectful request to all those who have a disproportionately huge beef with Israel: Consider going after other countries such as China, Kenya, Russia, Gambia, Saudi Arabia. Any takers?And please do not compare Israel to Nazi Germany. Why not?Read this:http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/e/eichmann-adolf/transcripts/שנה טובה

Yours is a reckless and infantile comment which has no foundation in fact. The photo of Dr Michael Siegel being marched in the streets of Munich was first published on the front page of the "Washington Times" on 23rd March 1933. They did not have Photoshop then.

I am the grandson of Max Uhlfelder. Thank you Jon for writing this article. It's very good and includes details that I have heard throughout my life from my father. My grandfather Max died in 1959 and my father died in 2000. One small clarification -- my grandfather was released from Dachau after this event, in 1933 and it was not until Kristalnacht (November 9-10, 1938) that they were imprisoned again (also in Dachau). It is too bad you have to deal with internet haters and trolls, but they will always be there. In those interim years from 1933 to 1938 my father and grandfather felt that National Socialism (Naziism) would die out, and after all, they were Germans first (in their minds). It was the same people (like many of those writing above) that allowed Naziism not just to flourish but to take over Germany and to kill so many millions of Jews and others.

I have met one of the children who was on the train...she is 90 some years old and lives in Long Island, NY...my family came to the States not before..not after...but during the Holocaust (1940) and my Father was in a labor camp in Germany...all of my Fathers familywas lost as were most of my Mothers family...they came from Poland...as of now there are 3 of us 1st Cousins that all that remain.it is a shame that when you are young you do not ask questions and so none of us knows the whole story.About the way the Government of Israel treats the Arabs...they go into the Gaza Strip and tear down the houses when they blond toa bomber..the people in the Strip were told this would happen...if the Arabs want a homeland (and they deserve to have one) then they should turn in to the Israel Police any known bomber as a sign of good faith...you can not have people who want to kill you living next door to you.